


There Is No Death

by subtropicalStenella



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Angst and Feels, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Memories, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Reminiscing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 02:35:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13731309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subtropicalStenella/pseuds/subtropicalStenella
Summary: Rebels never really goes into how Empire Day affected Kanan.





	There Is No Death

We’ve been back on the ground, the Ghost hidden among a cluster of the conical towers dotting Lothal’s surface, for close to three hours before I noticed something was off. 

 

“Hey… Has anyone seen Kanan?” 

“Oh,  _ now  _ he worries about Kanan,” Sabine drawls, not looking up from the Stormie helmet she's modifying. A little more morbid than her usual designs, this one was becoming a grinning skull of some kind or other. She had plans to stick it on a pole outside the city gates with the one she had sketched a different skull on, but hadn't yet painted.  _ Mandos. _

 

“Sabine…” Hera says. Nothing more than that, but it's the voice that also says, “Please don't,” and “Go easy on him,” and “This isn't necessary,” all at once.

“ _ Should _ I be worried about Kanan?”

 

He'd been  _ fine _ all day. Hadn't even gotten blown up or shot or thrown into any walls or overturned his speeder or anything.  _ And  _ the plan to ruin the parade had gone off without a hitch. Mostly. That was a  _ really _ good day for them.  

 

“Kid, did you ever think you might not be the only one on this crew who  _ really  _ hates Empire Day?” Zeb growls, also not looking at me, busy painstakingly disassembling and cleaning his bo-rifle. It had a lot more parts than it looked like it should, and was a lot  _ bigger  _ disassembled than it was in use.

“Gee, I wonder who else could hate Empire Day, on a ship full of rebels that just blew up a prototype model TIE-Fighter before it could launch for the first time in front of a huge crowd.” I'm not an idiot.

“Yeah, like your Master _ , the rogue Jedi _ ,” Sabine chirps,  _ way  _ too cheerfully sarcastic. 

 

I'm an  _ idiot _ .

 

And Sabine looks  _ viciously  _ smug. Probably has something to do with the way my face has frozen in utter horror. 

 

“He's outside,” she says sweetly, and her smile is in no way kind or friendly. 

 

I manage not to trip over my own feet in my mad scramble for the hatch, another, “Sabine…” from Hera following me out, this one tired and sad. 

 

\--

 

It's a beautiful night, the kind where I used to sit outside on the balcony and watch the wisps of fluffy clouds twist and dance over the bright, clear starfield in the warm breeze. But there's no sign of…

 

“Kanan?”

 

There's a heavy sigh from above me, towards the main gunner pod, that I kinda feel more than hear.

 

“Go back inside, kid.”

 

Uh,  _ no _ . I jump and pull myself up onto the sloped surface of the wing. Kanan is sprawled out on the center spine of the ship, using the bubble of the gunner pod as a backrest, his arm behind his head. His hair’s undone, probably so the tie doesn't dig into the back of his head while he… well he's not so much stargazing as staring off into the middle distance. It's… creepy. Kanan's normally animated face is carefully blank in a way that steals whatever apology I'd thought up on my way across the wing.

 

“ _ Go back inside,  _ Ezra. You're too young to drink with me and I'm not fit company for anyone who’s sober.”

“Wait, are you  _ drunk?” _

“Gettin’ there,” Kanan says, and takes a drink out of a three-quarters-full jar of something perfectly clear that  _ definitely  _ isn't water, given the fumes I can smell from here. He's doing  _ something _ that holds the liquor back from the wide mouth of the jar so he can drink without sitting up. It's a neat Force trick that probably took a  _ lot  _ of practice, and the implications behind that are… uncomfortable. 

 

“I… uh. I wanted to apologize. You guys…  _ you  _ did so much for me today and I didn't even think…”

I end up trailing off awkwardly. “I’ve been a real jerk.”

Kanan cracks a bitter smile. “Who tipped you off?”

“Wh-What? Nobody, I--”

“Kid I might not remember being nineteen but I remember fifteen-and-hurting,” Kanan cuts in, finally looking at me. “Whole Galaxy revolves around you and your pain, cos no one hurts like you do or could really understand anyway.”

 

He smiles at some unfunny inner joke, takes another drink. “And sometimes, maybe, you're right about that.”

“... Sabine, mostly,” I mumble, not sure how to respond to that. 

“Thought so. She's a good kid.”

“I… I’m sorry.”

“ _ It's okay,  _ Ezra. I get it.”

 

Why does forgiveness just make me feel  _ worse? _

 

“What do you mean, you don't ‘remember being nineteen?’” I ask instead, scuffing my feet along the deck. 

 

Kanan just holds up his jar of whatever it is in a toast and drinks again. He’s… definitely determined.

 

“Oh.”

“Hera's pretty much the only reason I'm not dead drunk in a ditch full of scrap rubble,” he says, and snorts something that isn't quite a laugh out his nose. “Or just dead,” he adds in afterthought.

“...Oh.”

 

Kanan looks over again with an apologetic smile, some of his hair falling into his face. “Like I said, I'm not fit company.”

 

He's really not, and probably wants to be left alone with… well, with his hurt that no one could really understand, but… something tells me that Kanan  _ shouldn't  _ be alone.

So I sit down on the Ghost’s spine next to Kanan's feet, curling up with my arms around my knees. We sit quietly for a while, not-watching the stars, Kanan not appearing to really notice or appreciate my presence but… tolerating it.

 

I start and stop myself from talking something like three times before I settle on: “Tell me about it?”

 

Kanan snorts again. “Kid, after fifteen years, if the memory of losing my master and killing the soldiers who had been my only friends was something that could be softened by  _ talking  _ about it, don't you think I'd have tried that?”

 

I wince and curl up a little tighter, trying not to take all the bitterness in Kanan's voice personally. It's… difficult.

 

“No, I… I meant the Order. The Jedi. I don't… All I know are the stories and…”

 

And most of those are either legends obviously exaggerated to inspire hope, or Imperial propaganda that was just as false, but designed to discredit anything good the Jedi had ever really done.

 

Kanan doesn't say anything for a long time, just takes another drink and sits with the jar and his hand on his chest. 

 

Maybe I should just go.

 

“I knew Master Windu,” Kanan says quietly.

“Wait,  _ really? _ ” I squeak--actually squeak, it's mortifying, but Kanan doesn't say anything about it. “ _ Mace Windu _ , the one who led the--”

 

The so-called Jedi Rebellion. Mace Windu the Imperial Traitor. The Grand Betrayer.

 

“--charge on Geonosis?” I finish awkwardly. 

“Mhm. And killed Jango Fett, and won Dantooine, and freed Ryloth and--”

“ _ DidhereallypunchatanktopiecesonDantooine?! _ ”

 

Kanan laughs,  _ really  _ laughs, and I feel a little less stupid about this whole thing.

 

“Where’d you hear that?”

“I’ve seen the holos,” I mutter defensively. Look, there had to be  _ some  _ truth to the propaganda. 

“Yeah, he did, those shots really are real recordings. Mostly from troopers’ helmet cams.”

“ _ Whoa _ .”

“What the holos  _ don't  _ show you is Master Windu  _ seriously regretting  _ doing it and saying it was a 'stupid-ass decision,’” Kanan continues, lapsing into his Teaching Voice a little.

 

Right, everything is a lesson. “Because… Jedi should avoid that kind of physical violence in the first place?”

“Mostly because even with the whole  _ shatterpoint  _ thing he still ended up breaking the absolute shit out of his hands,” Kanan says, grinning as he takes another drink.

 

I laugh and uncurl a bit. “So what was he really like?”

“Really tall,” Kanan answers easily, and then pauses, staring off into space again before he takes another drink, like he doesn't want to think about it. Which is weird, except…

Except Kanan himself now qualifies as  _ really tall _ , and maybe he doesn't want to think about the comparison. 

 

“He intimidated the hell out of everyone,” Kanan says, starting again. “And not just because he  _ invented _ a new lightsaber form and might have been heir to his homeworld throne and all that. He was one of our greatest minds and philosophers too.” 

“He was second only to Master Yoda, right?” 

“And then, probably only because the old frog had about three hundred years’ experience on him,” Kanan says, nodding and sitting up a bit to… hand me the jar?

“I thought I was too young to drink with you,” I mumble, but take it anyway.

“You are, so don't tell Hera,” Kanan replies, and grins conspiratorially. “Just sip it slow.”

 

It's sweet, and somehow oily and it  _ burns _ all the way down to my stomach. I wince and hand the jar back. It sits like a warm ember in my chest, which is kinda nice, but I'm not sure it's worth melting the inside of my mouth. “What  _ is  _ that?” 

 

“Vaporator-distilled moonshine. Pretty sure it's off Tattooine. There's these desert plants with big, flat, hard leaves, and they bloom  _ once _ , in the wet season.”

“Tattooine has a wet season?”

“A very, very rare and special one. Anyway, you cut off the flowering stalk in the center of the plant before it blooms and the juice inside the remaining plant’s core ferments over time.” 

“Huh.” 

 

We lapse into quiet again, Kanan sitting with his elbows on his knees, rolling the half-empty jar between his hands.

 

“He had a way with words, this ability to cut to the heart of a conversation, and he was  _ funny,  _ in a way not many people could see,” Kanan explains slowly, and starts to smile to himself. “He told me once that I was proof the Light was just, fair, and had a sense of humor.”

“Was he… could he see the future or something?” Some Jedi could, in the legends.

“A little, maybe, but mostly he meant that I was a pest who asked too many questions.”

“I don't get it.”

“I was exactly like my Master, Depa Billaba. She had been  _ his  _ Padawan, and it apparently served her right to get a hellion like me, after what she'd put him through.” 

“ _ Mace Windu _ trained your Master.”

“Yep.”

“So does that make you, what like, his… grand-Padawan? Am I  _ Mace Windu’s Great-Grand-Padawan?! _ ” 

 

Okay so what if the guy was dead and pretty much everyone who would notice the significance or care was either also dead or thought Windu was a traitor but you don't discover that kind of connection to legends every day!

 

Kanan laughs and drinks more of his moonshine. “Sure, kid. Just don't ask me to teach you anything from Form Seven or whatever, because I don't have any idea how the hell it works.”

 

“What about…”

“Master Billaba?” 

 

I nod, and Kanan sighs.

 

“She thought of herself as  _ damaged goods _ , and  was one of the bravest people I've ever known.”

“'Damaged goods?’”

 

Kanan nods. “I met her on accident. I'd been sent to the medbay over… something stupid, I barely remember, and she was in a bacta tank, six months into a coma thanks to General Grievous.”

“ _ The  _ General Grievous? With the--” I gesture with both hands as though dual-wielding sabers, except Grievous had used, “-- _ four?!” _

 

Kanan laughs into his jar and looks, strangely smug, a little  _ too  _ knowing. “ _ Oh  _ yeah.”

 

Wait,  _ no way _ , he would have been--math, what is math-- _ the same age?! If?! _

“Did  _ you?! _ ”

“Nah.”

“Oh,” That's... disappointing.

“Got to watch Master Billaba kick his ass and take off two of his hands in Round Two, though,” Kanan says, grinning.

“ _ Whoa!”  _

“Damn straight.”

 

I have a thought. A completely stupid one, that made no sense. If Master Depa Billaba had survived, if  _ any  _ of them had survived, if that  _ world  _ had survived, I would have been a totally different person. Kanan too, probably. Might not even be  _ Kanan.  _ I was pretty sure that was a fake name anyway.

 

But still…

 

“Do you think… Would…” 

This is so stupid.

“Would she have liked me?”

 

Wow, I sound like a little kid, so quiet and small I’m not even sure if Kanan hears me. He doesn't say anything for a while, and then…

 

“Yeah, I think she would have.” 

 

After that, it's like the words can't stop.

He tells me about… about  _ all  _ of them. Or at least, everyone he knew.

 

He tells me about his starry-eyed puppy crush on General Skywalker's Padawan, a skinny blue-and-bronze Togruta who fought with two sabers.

Another Togruta, a Master, red and grey with the kindest eyes of anyone he had ever seen.

A Nautolan Master who was never not smiling.

A pair of Miralukan Masters, a Knight and a Healer, who specialized in battlefield extraction.

Another Padawan, a human girl, a shy, tiny thing with dark hair and blue eyes and a knack for languages that meant she picked up Mando’a from her Master’s clones in a matter of weeks.

A feliform…  _ something _ that was sentient and Force-Sensitive and therefore undergoing Jedi training despite having full paws instead of hands.

A  _ red  _ Twi’lek who frequently “looked like a frustrated strawberry” and was apparently determined to be the nicest person in the Galaxy despite it.

 

His voice has gone raspy, like he's losing it, but he keeps talking. 

 

A Master-Diplomat with white hair like a banner so long it dragged on the floor if she didn't consciously hold it up with the Force.

A blue Twi’lek with markings like smoke down her lekku.

A soft-spoken Mirialan whose face was ‘naked,’ save for the tattoos on her lower lip that were a higher honor than literally any other symbol they wore.

A Kel Dor who loved his clones as his sons.

 

He keeps talking, naming the dead, the small fraction he had known of the  _ thousands  _ killed, fifteen years ago today. 

 

I'm not sure why. Maybe just because he knew them, and I didn't. I couldn't have. Never got the chance.

But… maybe now, because of Kanan, because of  _ me _ , maybe they won't be forgotten.


End file.
